New Zealand Cricket chief David White calls for four-day Test

David White, New Zealand Cricket chief executive has said in his public backing to the idea by the International Cricket Council (ICC) to have a Two-tier system in place for Test matches.

He also called for the duration of the longer format of the game to be brought down to four days from its five-day format.

Pakistan and England recently played a closed test match and we have seen a good contest between bat and bowl but this match also finished in 4 days.

“We need to seriously look at it,” White told ESPNCricinfo.com. “One of the challenges at the moment is if you play a three-Test series it has to be played over four weeks. Four weeks is a long time. But if you play a three-Test series of four-day cricket, it can be played over three weeks, so you save a week.

“And, as we know, the calendar is very congested. There’s a lot of work to be done around this but it’s certainly a concept that’s worth exploring further.”

“We are big supporters [of the two-tier system]. There’s already a lot of interest in New Zealand in Test cricket, but if we had a competition with promotion and relegation and a winner at the end, it would really increase interest, no doubt about that,” White said.

“We support meritocracy. If you’re good enough, you’re good enough – if you’re not good enough you shouldn’t be there. It’s incumbent upon us to make sure we are good enough. It will make people look at their high-performance programmes and their systems, so the product of Test cricket will improve as well,” he added.

“Everyone agrees we need context, we need something that’s aspirational. [But] the countries who don’t make the top division in the first instance [should not be] not disadvantaged financially – that’s really important,” White said.